Real Estate Institute of NSW president Malcolm Gunning told Real Estate Business that the state government regarded agents as “easy targets” to help it win votes.

“What they’re doing is creating theatre around agents and they want the electorate to perceive that they’re doing something. But in reality, they’re doing nothing about it,” he said.

Mr Gunning said the way to reduce underquoting would be to make it harder to become an agent, because a sales rep can’t be expected to properly value a home with just a few days of training.

PRDnationwide managing director Tony Brasier was also critical of the NSW government’s proposed reforms, which he called “political grandstanding of the highest order”.

“By their own admission there were only 82 complaints to NSW Fair Trading last year on underquoting – coming from over 200,000 property transactions,” Mr Brasier said.

“All this in a rising market where it is extremely difficult to very accurately price property based on historical comparable sales.”

Mr Brasier said the premier and fair trading minister should consult with the industry to find long-term solutions to underquoting rather than make headline-grabbing announcements.

“The government’s current actions, where it recently ‘raided’ numerous agents in the Sutherland shire and announced a blitz on underquoting, has to be seen very cynically so close to an election. It is akin to taking a chainsaw to a small bonsai plant,” he said.